Partition systems are often employed to isolate portions of a building or room, by serving as a barrier to dust, noise, light, odors, and the like. In construction zones, partitions are useful for protecting a clean area from a work area, for example, protecting an area where furniture and rugs are temporarily stored from an area where wood floors are being refinished.
Workers at construction sites often use rudimentary techniques for installing partitions. Some simply nail, screw, or staple the curtain or partition material to the floor, ceiling, and abutting walls, resulting in damage to their surfaces. Others tape, or otherwise adhere, a curtain or plastic sheet to the walls and ceilings. The tape usually fails to stick, but if it does stick, as the tape is removed, paint can pull off with the tape, or adhesive is left behind.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,924,469 and 7,658,219, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference, disclose partition mount systems that addresses these limitations. These systems offer the advantage of accommodating standard extension poles, for example, painters poles, and is compatible with a variety of commercially-available curtain or drape materials, for example plastic, cloth, and the like. The disclosed systems are “clean” systems designed to be installed and removed without damaging or otherwise marking the ceiling, floor or walls in the construction zone. Assembly is easy and fast and can be accomplished by a single individual.
Many ceilings, for example drop ceilings consist of grid-work of for example, metal channels which snap together in regularly spaced apart patterns of cells. Each cell is then filled with lightweight ceiling tiles or panels which simply drop into the grid. It is common for the partition mount systems described in connection with U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,924,469 and 7,658,219 to be used in connection with such drop ceilings. In such configurations, placement of the mounting head directly under a tile or directly under an unsupported section of the metal channels can cause the drop ceiling channels or tiles to shift in position.